Got a chance to check out Activision’s lastest Spider-Man game, “Spider-Man 3” for the Xbox 360, the other day. Graphically, it looks amazing. There’s plenty of web-slinging and a big ol’ city map. The things you can do to enemies are pretty awesome too – get a good combo going and you can wrap ’em up in web, mid-air stomp on them and finish off by whipping them around your head. (Amusingly, you can also string them up on lamp poles so they swing back and forth).

Playing as Black Suit Spidey lets you be a little more vicious than do-gooder Peter Parker/Red Suit Spidey usually is. There’s also a rage meter for Black Suit, to unleash ultra vengeful attacks. But it doesn’t mean that you get to run around killing bystanders or anything. What really caught my eye though, is the game’s playable cut scenes. When certain cinematics take over, you’re prompted to hit buttons to control what’s happening in the cut scene. Miss a button and you’ll fall off the Goblin Glider, that sort of thing. Playable cut scenes are genius as there’s nothing I dislike more than being forced to sit through them. Who amongst us doesn’t get all antsy and start pressing buttons while they’re happening anyway? Might as well put that to good use, right? More games should do this.

Also looked at the Wii and Nintendo DS versions of the game. The Wii game is slightly different than the other console versions when it comes to game play (you don’t always have the Black Suit option etc), but it does make good use of the Wii Remote – to sling webs, you’ve gotta go through the motions and flick the Wii Remote in the direction you want the web to go. Meanwhile, the DS game is all about using the touch pad to target and attack enemies and it apparently took a tester 15 hours to play through the entire game.